How much we take for granted…

Here is part of a piece I wrote based on Joni Cole’s prompt at the ‘prompt and pinot workshop’, finally getting a chance to post…

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Sometimes it amazes me how much we tend to sleep through and take for granted. I come down in the morning ready with a critical eye of what needs to be cleaned up from last night, and how much paint from ‘blue blue’ yesterday – our painting session with eighteen-month old Anji (who I convince myself is a budding Picasso) is on the hardwood floor. But every now and then, I stop. I look around at my home – and it hits me. This realization that we created this home, this space, Abhi and I, we started this family. We came here from a land far away, went through the immigrant experience and all else that life threw at us this past ten years. And all of this adds to the beauty of now, this moment, this sweet hand tugging at my pants asking for ‘dudu’ and ‘cracker’.

Some days are crappy, and I forget. I get enmeshed in my own suffering and my own story, and I play my own drama over and over in my head. I go through all my grievances – but really I just want to be heard. I want to be heard for my humanness – simple humanness that also seems astonishing sometimes. The sheer experience of being human and always trying to control that which we can’t, and trying to keep sane with the changes that happen everyday, many of them small but that still leave their mark on the bodies so that at night when we finally sleep, there is a collective sigh of finally letting go.

When I’m in my suffering Zone, everything is terrible. But then something small happens – something almost like magic. That moment when my mind says, ‘nothing ever works!’ I hear a deeper voice – in all honesty – like a Mom saying, ‘honey that is simply not true’. That voice that reminds me of the smile this morning, or that unexpected sun streaming through the window, a surprise after the dour weather prediction. Or that unexpected compliment from partner or friend, or the moment when I pick up Anji from daycare and her face lights up. And in that small moment of reminder, something shifts. I get out of the drama, out of my own head and the movie ends. I come to the real life – and then it hits me again – how much we take for granted. How much is right in this moment.

With Love, S.